Jose,

We just came across Con Salsa! one Sunday morning on the internet.  Pure accident.  I’m originally from Massachusetts, so I use WBUR as my NPR station here in Austria.  Because we’re six hours ahead of you in Vienna, the timing of your show is great for us.  We listen to the show over Sunday breakfast, dancing around in the kitchen eating arepas.  (Well, some of us do more of the eating–I’m a Massachusetts gringo, and some of us do more of the dancing–Gloria is a Cali-born and Bogota-raised Colombiana.)

As for the salsa scene here, there are a couple of popular latin music dance clubs.  Vienna does something like Boston’s First Night on New Year’s Eve, but on a much bigger scale, with tens of thousands of people in the streets of the old city, lots of stands selling food and warm wine and rum punch, and a dozen different bandstands scattered in the various plazas playing every kind of music, from waltzes to pop to Servian turbofolk.  This past year we were wandering through the crowds from plaza to plaza when we stumbled on a great Cuban salsa band playing in one of the plazas.  I don’t remember what they were called now, but they were fantastic.  They must have been freezing, but their playing didn’t suffer, and they drew a huge crowd.  In the end, everybody loves salsa.

Again, thanks for the wonderful music.

Bill and Gloria

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007